It seems to me that the key fact about the U.S. electorate is one that has gotten very little attention in this discussion: about as many eligible voters don't vote as do. Leftists like to think that the no-shows have the same world view as theirs -- they are said to be the poor, the non-white, and so on. Perfect candidates for recruitment by left third parties, right? Well, I don't see much evidence that those little parties are recruiting many of them.
Instead, I think the non-voters are mostly centrist in their political views, like the actual voters. The only thing that differentiates them from the voters is that they don't think that what they would get out of voting would be worth the effort of dragging themselves to the polls. That's the group the major parties try to appeal to. If there were a lot of potential votes on the left, you can bet that the DP would scramble to get them motivated. Instead, all the evidence available seems to suggest that what works with the non-voters, to the extent anything works, are the same mostly conventional appeals that work with the "likely voters."
******************************************************* to which Mike B) replies:
One can be fined something like $100 for failing to vote in an election in Australia. Apathy in this realm is not considered by most to be much of an option down here. The results speak for themselves and I think reflect what would happen in the USA if everyone turned out and voted--considering the current state of class conscious organization. With nearly 100% turnout, you don't get overwhelming leftist electoral victories in Australia. Hell, we've got Shrub's pal Howard for a PM! Maybe Mark Latham will win the next election. It's Labor's turn to run the State anyway. Let's hope he is not quite the lap dog the great left-wing Labour Party PM of the UK is.
What you do see confirmed by compulsory voting in a bourgeois democracy, like the one in Australia, is the old observation by Marx: the dominant ideas of any age are ever the ideas of the ruling class.
A communist revolution is possible, but it can only be made by the workers themselves and most of the workers of the world are not interested at this moment in time--which is not to say they will never act in their class interests.
Best, Mike B)
===== 1844 Paris Manuscripts, Marx makes a major point of the relationship between the sexes: "The infinite degradation in which man exists for himself is expressed in this relation to the woman,"
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